


The Glory And The Scum

by XCVG



Category: Stargate - All Media Types, Stargate SG-1, The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Crack Crossover, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Future Fic, Gen, Science Fiction, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:48:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22432879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XCVG/pseuds/XCVG
Summary: Centuries ago, the Tau'ri appeared on the galactic scene, kicked everything over, then disappeared, all within the space of a few decades. Since then, Earth has passed into legend, and none dare to probe the alleged homeworld of humanity and its star system.Well, except for the crew of the Black Fury, a half-competent band of space pirates with a list of debts a mile long and nothing left to lose. There's got to be some treasure left, ripe for the taking, right?Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the Tau'ri aren't gone. They just decided to kind of pull back and do their own thing for a while.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	The Glory And The Scum

**Author's Note:**

> This is very much another one that just wouldn't get out of my head. I threw this together in a hurry and I have no idea if I'll continue it, but let me know what you think!
> 
> The premise is pretty simple though it's not entirely made clear yet. Some time shortly after the end of Stargate Universe (so mid-late 2010s), the Stargate program is shut down for various reasons and all evidence of it is buried. The rest of the galaxy, which is kind of a mess at this point, keeps on going, and Earth eventually fades into legend. Centuries later, some desperate space pirates decide to try their luck with humanity's homeworld or whatever might be left of it.
> 
> We have some contrived coincidences here that lets us work with The Expanse canon characters. Originally, this wasn't going to be the case at all, with only some of the high-level government characters like Avasarala showing up. But it felt like such a waste, and I had an idea just the other day on how I could make it work.

“Are we doing this? Are we really doing this?” Stip questioned, leaning against a wall.

It was once carved ornately with Goa’uld symbols, but like everything aboard their secondhand Al’kesh, had long since been desecrated and modified. An obscene message was scratched into the metalwork to his right, and a few paces away a hole had been smashed through with sledgehammers and later patched over with metal that wasn’t even close to matching.

Why they’d done that escaped his mind. He was sure it had been for something important- maybe an emergency repair or maybe to install some new piece of equipment- but despite having rolled with the crew of the _Black Fury_ since the beginning, he couldn’t recall the exact reason.

“Even those waxy-faced fucks think it’s a treasure trove,” a long-haired, bearded man replied. Ull was a newer recruit, who’d joined just before their recent troubles and was now locked in because of it. He didn’t seem to hold it against them. He didn’t hold grudges, but despite that Ull was one of the few on the crew Stip was truly scared of. He’d personally witnessed the unassuming man shoot helpless children and laugh about it. It would take a lot to make Ull angry, but he didn’t want to know what would happen if he did.

“They’re also scared enough of it that they’re still avoiding it, even after they steamrolled the Yiting Star Empire. Those guys may not have been a real empire like the ones centuries ago, but they were still no joke,” Stip argued. He jerked his head toward a blue-haired woman in a matching jumpsuit. “What do you think, Lia?”

Talia, the closest thing they had to a chief engineer, shook her head. “Oh no, fuck that. I’m not taking sides.” With that, she threw a rude gesture their way and headed off to the cockpit.

“Come on, Stip,” a falsely-sweet voice teased from the other side of the room. He’d rarely seen Yenassa outside her armor, and it clinked gently as she took a seat on top of a metal packing crate. “This is Earth, the alleged birthplace of humanity. The guys who came out of nowhere, kicked the shit out of everyone, then disappeared, all within a few decades. Aren’t you the least bit curious about what happened all those centuries ago?”

“I’m not,” Ull pointed out. “I don’t care what happened. If they were that powerful, they must have been wealthy, too. I just want some of that. If they’re gone, free for the taking. If they’re not, all the better.”

“Well, aren’t you always a ray of sunshine?” Yenassa said sarcastically, then turned back to Stip. “Tau’ri, Stip. Sure, they’re big and scary in the stories, but that was centuries ago. They’re probably dead by now. If those stories were ever true anyway. I mean, would you really believe some of that shit? Who knows, maybe Earth never existed.”

“I’m just saying, what if they’re _not_ dead or helpless?” Stip urged. He wasn’t a coward. But this was insane. “What if there’s a good reason nobody goes to the Sol system? What if it’s not just superstition and unspoken rules? What if the reason nobody’s gone to Sol is because everyone who’s tried ended up vaporized?”

Ull shrugged and said unhelpfully, “We’ll try not to get vaporized.”

“Fuck, at the end of the day, who cares?” Yenassa asked rhetorically. “We’re dead anyway. We owe the New Lucians, we owe the Great Family and the Red Suns and half the minor warlords in the Arm. Hell, even that pretentious asshat Da’kyll is pissed at us after we bailed on him and his people.” She gestured with two fingers to her head, mimicking a gun. “So, the way I see it, either this works and we make it, or it doesn’t, and we’re no worse off.”

There was a morbid truth to her words. Bad luck, he’d called it at first, but then it had kept getting worse, and they hadn’t been able to catch a break. They were so deep in the hole that even in a best case scenario, he wasn’t sure they’d be able to bail their way out. Raiding the forbidden zone that was the Sol system wasn’t an act of hubris, it was an act of desperation. “I suppose so. I don’t have to like it.”

“Earth or bust, folks,” a quiet but firm voice interrupted. Their captain didn’t walk with a swagger, but rather a decisive stride, and even his loose trenchcoat seemed to wave with purpose. He was captain for a reason, and on this ship, his word was law. “Get to your stations. We jump into the system in five. After that, we’re sinking our teeth into whatever we find.”

No more debate, then. Whether he liked it or not no longer mattered. Stip nodded stiffly, then followed his captain up to the cockpit. Behind him, Yenassa and Ull made themselves busy checking their weapons one last time.

* * * * *

The XO’s badge in James Holden’s pocket poked him annoyingly as he rode the rickety old elevator up to the command deck. The _Canterbury_ was an old ship, a colony ship before it had been an ice hauler, and the elevator shook and chattered its way up the bridge. It wasn’t a pretty ship, consisting of nine coupled Epstein fusion drives at the aft end, followed by a rickety crew section, then a box several hundred meters long that held their frozen cargo. The crew decks were arranged along the thrust axis, and when they were under thrust, it was almost like standing on a planet.

Apart from the dim lighting, lack of a sky, ominous noises and pervasive odd smell, of course.

“What’s going on?” he asked as he stepped onto the command deck, subconsciously swirling the bulb of coffee in his hand.

“We’ve got a rock following us,” Ade Nygaard, their navigator, told him. She kept her voice professional. Not even a sideways smile, which said something in and of itself. “Well, it can’t be a rock, but it has no drive signature, either. No idea how long it’s been there, but we just found it half an hour ago.”

He furrowed his brow. “What? Where did it come from?”

“Alex figures it’s a stealth ship,” she suggested. “Fen keeps telling me it’s some kind of cosmic space kraken.”

He sucked at his bulb of coffee, trying to square the circle in his head. “And you’re sure it’s following us?”

“I increased our acceleration and twiddled with our vectors a little, and that thing matched it perfect,” Alex answered from the pilot’s seat. His southern accent- Mariner Valley, really, but even after years away from Earth Holden still associated it with a region on Earth- almost hid the fear and confusion in his voice.

“What the fuck?” Holden asked rhetorically, under his breath. “You’re sure it’s not a problem with our sensors?”

Ade shook her head. “I’ve run the diagnostics three times. All good. Well, the number three telescope mount is busted, but-”

“It’s been busted since last year, and it wouldn’t do _that_ ,” Holden finished. “What the fuck?”

“What have we got?” an authoritative voice asked. All of them relaxed, slightly, when Captain McDowell entered the command deck. The captain always knew what to do.

“A rock that’s matching our course,” Holden summarized.

The captain shot him a glance that seemed to say _Are you fucking kidding me?_

“It’s not a sensor glitch, and it’s already changed trajectory to match our burns,” he continued quickly. “Alex thinks it might be some kind of stealth ship.”

“Assuming such a thing existed, what the hell would they want with us?” The captain sat down, pulled over a terminal and scrolled through the logs. The frown on his face deepened.

“An experimental military ship on a trial run, maybe?” Holden suggested. It was the best explanation he could come up with.

“It kinda didn’t work if we’ve picked them up,” Alex pointed out. “Think they’ll blow us out of the sky if we let ‘em know we got them?”

“They just increased their acceleration!” Ade shouted suddenly. “Whatever it is, it’s now on an intercept course.”

“Everybody strap in,” the captain ordered, grimacing. “Alex, once we’re secure, increase our burn to two _g_.”

Holden plunked himself into the nearest acceleration couch- the first officer’s, he realized- and strapped himself in. Throughout the ship, the crew would be doing much the same, as well as making sure their cargo of ice was well secured. Normal acceleration was 0.3g. It was fast enough to get where you were going, but easy on the crew. A full _g_ was perfect for Holden, an Earther, but very uncomfortable for Martians and lethal for Belters who’d grown up without the massive gravity of a planet.

“That’s an awfully hard burn for this old tub, boss,” Alex objected. He shook his head and leaned back in his acceleration couch. “Two _g_ , coming right up.”

Holden felt an invisible hand push him into the acceleration couch. Despite years in space, he still found himself thinking in terrestrial terms. It was like lying on his back and weighing twice as much. Around him, the _Canterbury_ shook and shuddered. If she was ever built for high acceleration, she wasn’t really up to it anymore.

“They’re matching us!” Alex shouted. “Matching us and some.”

The captain cursed. “Burn like hell. Don’t let ‘em catch us.”

“You’ve got it. Everyone hold on.”

Holden has a moment to steel himself for what was coming next. Within a few seconds, he’d gone from weighing twice what he would have on Earth to- fuck, it was way more. He could barely breathe, and if it wasn’t for the stimulants being pushed into his veins, probably would have passed already. The _Cant_ didn’t like it much more than he did. The ship shuddered and screamed as her engines slammed her onward.

Suddenly, the ship shuddered harder, and threw Holden sideways. That wasn’t shaking, that was a hard impact. He forced the fear down as alarms blared, someone screamed, and Alex cursed. Were they hit? Did the ice break free? Did something explode? How bad was it?

He brought up engineering readouts on his terminal. The damage was aft, near the engines. Whatever it was punched a hole in the hull, cut through a bunch of piping, blew apart a holding tank, and missed some critical drive components

“What the fuck was that?” Ade shouted. Her voice was strained- from acceleration or panic, he couldn’t tell.

“They’re shootin’ at us!” Alex yelled back, just as agitated.

Holden glanced at the captain. No doubt they were thinking the same thing. If the pirates were shooting to disable or shooting as a warning, they’d stop shooting once the _Canterbury_ stopped burning. They’d board, most likely, which was bad, but hopefully they were just after the ice. It would be a terrifying few days, and Pur’n’kleen would probably try to screw them over the loss, but they would probably make it out of it.

The fact that they hadn’t hailed was worrying. If the pirates were shooting to kill, they’d keep shooting after they cut thrust. Then again, if the pirates were shooting to kill, they were all dead anyway.

He ordered, shouting over the alarms and failing old spaceship, “Cut the drive!”

“Cap’n?” Alex questioned.

“Do it!” Captain McDowell agreed. “Cut thrust!”

Holden sucked in a deep breath as gravity seemed to disappear and he went from being pushed into his seat to almost floating out of it. It was always a bit strange to him to transition from normal gravity to floating, and to go from a high-g burn to null g was even more dramatic. As he made sure he was still intact, his lizard brain tried to orient. Was he floating above the wall or lying on the floor?

He was sure the stimulants didn’t help.

“So, uh, now what?” Alex asked quietly.

* * * * *

“Well, they’ve stopped _accelerating_ ,” Stip reported, frowning at his console. Or, rather, the flat-panel display hanging off an arm a few inches above his console. “But they’re not _decelerating_ either.”

“Maybe we wrecked their sublight drive,” Talia suggested. “Hmm. Can’t tell with the sensors we’ve got left. Maybe they’re like one of those old Hebridanian scows, they can only thrust one way.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the captain dismissed. “Stip, I want you leading the boarding party. I want some of the crew alive- make sure Ull knows that.”

That made sense. Hopefully, this ship would be a decent haul, but it was only the beginning. They’d detected a lot of activity in the system, and what they learned from their captives would let them know where to strike.

“You got it, skipper,” he acknowledged, heading out of the cockpit. Talia followed- she was the only one on the crew who could speak any Tau’ri. He had no idea why she knew the language at all, and would probably never ask.

The rest of the boarding party was waiting, already armed and ready to go. There was Ull, Yenassa, Dowe, Miles, and the black-haired kid he still didn’t know the name of. That was most of what was left of the crew; those who were in too deep and those who had nowhere else to go.

“No rings on the other end,” Ull reported. “We have to do this the fun way.”

Stip nodded. To his left, Talia strapped on a crude armored vest and loaded her rifle, a copy of an old Langaran design. He turned his attention back to the rest of the crew. “Okay, listen up. We’ve done this before- board and take anything worth taking- but the captain wants at least a few alive this time. Shoot back if they shoot at you, rough them up if you have to, but we need some of the crew alive. And be careful. These are the Tau’ri we could be dealing with.”

There was a chorus of acknowledgement, some grudging and some enthusiastic. It was the best he was going to get. Pirates were notoriously unruly, himself no exception.

“We’re ready to go,” Ull told him, standing next to the controls. “Lined up to what pilot thinks is an airlock and everything.”

He nodded stiffly. “Let’s do this, then.”

The “fun way”, as Ull put it, was one of the modifications they’d added to the Al’kesh over the years. It was an extendable tunnel, more or less, with a hatch to the inside of their ship on one end and a flexible ring on the other. They would line up to the ship they were trying to board, extend the tunnel, and then either force a door open or cut a hole in the hull depending on what they were able to find.

Ull opened the hatch, and Stip stepped into the tunnel. It was small, enough for one person or two across if they squished a bit. The gravity plating was cheap junk, and the pull was noticeably weaker and far less steady. It made him queasy, but once they were aboard the other ship it wouldn’t be a problem.

The hatch on the other side seemed to be a pair of sliding doors, one above and one below. It looked sturdy, but well-worn, with scratches in the metal and the markings- which he couldn’t read- barely legible.

“Can you get that open?” he asked Talia as she came down the tunnel.

“Don’t mock me.” She took a brief look at the control panel, then flipped down her visor and lit up a plasma lance. Stip averted his eyes. He’d rather not go blind.

The acrid stench of burning metal filled the tunnel. Its airflow wasn’t very good. It was probably less than a minute, but the wait felt agonizing. The “fun way” was a bad option- in addition to being of dubious construction, it was a slow way in.

Talia shut the lance off, stowing it and wielding her rifle. “We’re in.”

Stip clapped her on the shoulder, and she flattened herself against the wall of the tunnel as the rest of them stepped onto the other ship.

Or tried to.

He stepped out of the tunnel onto the metal deck before him, only to bounce off and go floating toward the very high ceiling. He flailed wildly, managing to find purchase on a handhold on what might have been the ceiling or the wall. His mind spun as he tried and failed to orient himself.

The rest of his team wasn’t having a better time. One by one they stepped off onto the Tau’ri ship and found themselves with no purchase. Ull bounced off a wall and spun mid-air. Dowe bounced off a wall and collided with Miles when he tried to step aboard. Yenassa sailed straight past him. The black-haired kid threw up, his vomit forming globules that floated slowly upward. Only Talia managed to move with any sort of coordination, dragging herself along a wall with whatever handholds he could find.

“Get your shit together!” Stip hissed at them. He forced down a wave of nausea.

“They shut off the gravity!” Yenassa complained. She stood with one foot hooked in a metal bar on the floor and one gauntleted hand around gripping an access hatch on the wall. Or did he have that sideways? “And the ship is fucking sideways!”

“Which way?” Stip asked Talia. She floated beside him, one hand on the wall. She was sideways, feet toward the wall. Or was he sideways?

“I wasn’t able to get good scans. The control station is a few compartments forward, I think.” She glanced sideways and motioned with one hand. “Or, actually, a few decks up.”

He reoriented himself, head toward the front of the ship. It still felt wrong. “The back of the ship is down. We’re heading up. Dowe, stay here. You know what to do. Everyone else, follow me.”

* * * * *

Space pirates. It was space pirates.

Holden didn’t know how the hell space pirates managed to get their hands on stealth tech, but he wasn’t in any position to question them. They were the ones with guns.

They looked the part of space pirates, dressed in mismatched armor with a variety of mean-looking but low quality guns. Some of them didn’t even seem to have vac suits. Among themselves, they spoke a language Holden didn’t recognize. It wasn’t English, or Spanish, or Belter Creole, or anything he heard before.

Their leader seemed to be a dark-haired man with mismatched armor and a nasty-looking pistol. He barked something at one of the other pirates, a blue-haired woman in a blue jumpsuit.

“Who is captain?” she relayed with an accent he couldn’t place.

Holden was careful to not glance at McDowell, but some of the other crew weren’t. The man sighed and stated, “I am.”

The pirate leader shot him in the head.

“Fuck!” Holden shouted. His sentiment was echoed by most of the crew, who were visible shocked. Someone sobbed. A tiny part of his brain realized that he was now the closest thing the _Cant_ had to a captain.

The pirate leader said something to the blue-haired woman, who relayed, “That was a warning.”

“God damn it! We’re cooperating!” Holden snapped. Panic wouldn’t help anyone here. He kept his hands visible and repeated, in a forced calm, “We’ll cooperate. Nobody else needs to die. You can have the ice. Okay? We will give you the ice. Take all you want.”

A confused expression crossed the woman’s face. She exchanged words with the pirate leader, and then the pirates started shouting at each other.

As they bickered, Holden finally realized what was off about them. When the man fired his gun, he almost went flying. In fact, none of them really knew how to move in zero-G. They clung awkwardly to handholds and spun when they waved their guns around. He wondered why they didn’t just lock themselves to the deck.

But mostly, he really, really hoped they wouldn’t kill them.

* * * * *

“Ice? Who hauls ice across a fucking system?” Miles shouted. He spun as he waved his arm angrily. “We came all the way here and all we score is a ship full of fucking ice?”

“Miles, nobody is happy about this, but if you don’t shut up I’ll shoot you myself,” Stip snapped. They had already been on edge, but had seen a glimmer of hope. He wasn’t ready to give up, but he understand how disappointing this setback could seem.

“They better have something else, because ice won’t get us anywhere,” Ull commented. He didn’t seem angry, but then again he never seemed angry.

“It could be a misunderstanding,” Yenassa suggested. “Ask him what the ship is carrying. Make him show us.”

Talia looked to him, and he nodded. She asked the man- probably the first officer, now acting captain- a question in Tau’ri.

The man responded in what he hoped was the affirmative, then moved his hand slowly to one of the consoles. He tapped on it, bringing up a diagram of the ship, and pointed to it, saying something in Tau’ri.

He didn’t need a description to understand what he was seeing.

“It _is_ fucking ice!” Miles roared. He let go of his handhold and bounced half

“Miles, you can steam all you want back on the _Fury_ but until then keep your shit together,” Stip seethed at him. He turned back to Talia. “Do they have anything else?”

“Fuel pellets, water, air scrubbers, some medical supplies, rations,” she translated, adding, “He says the ship is old and not well stocked.”

That was something. “Fuel pellets? Naqahdah?”

Talia exchanged a few words with the first officer. He looked confused, which was not promising. He tapped the display again, bringing up a different diagram, and pointed to it.

“Well?”

His engineer shook her head. “No. It’s just fuel for nuclear fusion.”

“What now, boss?” Ull asked. “Can we kill them?”

Stip had to think about that for a moment. The captain said some captives, not all of them. They couldn’t fit them all aboard their ship, anyway. He chewed his lip, hesitating, before pointing out the first officer, a rather un-threatening man who might be the pilot, and a woman floating halfway between the floor and the ceiling. “We’ll take them. Kill everyone else.”

His crew didn’t even hesitate as they raised their weapons and opened first. It was messier, sloppier than usual because of the lack of gravity.

The first officer launched himself at Stip, rage on his face and shouting something he couldn’t understand. He’d done so with such ferocity that it had taken him by surprise, and he’d barely been able to get his zat out and a shot off. The man contorted with the shock, sending him spinning, but his paralyzed body still slammed into Stip.

It took two of them, Miles and the black-haired kid, to lift him off and tie him up. They were hindered by the lack of gravity- it seemed every time they moved, it sent them flying. Another zat went off, and the screams of protest from the remaining crew went silent.

“I fucking hate this ship,” Stip grouched.

* * * * *

It took an irritatingly long time to make it back down to the tunnel, with the extra weight of two stunned and one reluctantly cooperative captive. Stip cursed himself for not forcing the crew to turn the gravity back on before they started shooting. It would have made the journey a lot later.

Dowe was waiting for them outside the tunnel. They had two captives with them, one a dark-haired woman and one a large, bald man. The captives were tied up surprisingly well- they must have been forced to do it themselves, he realized.

The big, bald one said something to the woman, who frowned. He turned to Talia, who shrugged.

“Found these two hiding in a maintenance passage,” Dowe explained.

“And why, exactly, were you looking in maintenance passages?”

They shrugged. “Looking for loot.”

“I told you to stay here, not go poking around,” he growled.

They shrugged again. “Yeah. What do I do with them?”

They could handle five captives, and they were already tied up. He was tempted to shoot them, just to teach Dowe a lesson, but… no. The captain might not be happy about that. “Put them with the other prisoners.”

* * * * *

At least the Tau’ri ship made a good explosion.

After they’d secured the prisoners and disengaged the tunnel, they’d moved back to a safe distance and blasted away at what they thought was the Tau’ri ship’s reactor. It took only a few shots for it to react violently and dramatically, blowing apart in a brilliant blue burst.

Some of the crew had gathered to watch the spectacle. The rest of them had retreated to whatever corner of the ship they preferred to mope in. All things being equal, it wasn’t the most disastrous raid they’d done, but it was hardly the glorious raid on the almighty Tau’ri that some had hoped for.

“So?” Stip asked the captain, quietly. The ice freighter they’d blown up was now a cloud drifting through space. It had an odd serenity to it.

“We had one bust, but there’s thousands of other ships in the system,” he reassured, though Stip had known the man long enough to hear the uncertainty in his voice. “We have five captives. They’ll tell us what we need to know.”

 _And if we don’t like the answers?_ was the question on Stip’s tongue. Not for the first time, he held it.


End file.
